Category Archives: Fiction

The Great Untranslated: Jernalderdrøm (Iron Age Dream) by Steinar Løding

Posted on June 2, 2018 by

                 Jernalderdrøm (Iron Age Dream) is a giant literary project undertaken by Norwegian author Steinar Løding, about whose existence, most probably, you will learn only from this post. Do not be surprised. I myself discovered this writer … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, The Great Untranslated | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Secret Year (Тайный год) by Mikhail Gigolashvili

Posted on April 29, 2018 by

It wasn’t Sergey Eizenstein’s bombastic epic Ivan the Terrible that Mikhail Gigolashvili had at the back of his mind when writing The Secret Year, but, as he mentioned in an interview, Alexei German’s infernal fresco Hard to be a God. … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Guest Post: Luís Miguel Rosa on Dom Tanas de Barbatanas by Tomaz de Figueiredo

Posted on April 13, 2018 by

Dom Tanas de Barbatanas is a weird novel even by the standards of the Portuguese fiction of its time. When it arrived in bookstores in 1962, Portugal was already awash in the literary experimentalism that electrified a big chunk of … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Guest Posts, Reviews | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The Great Untranslated: Pałuba by Karol Irzykowski

Posted on March 19, 2018 by

In his introduction to Celina Wieniewska’s translation of Bruno Schulz’s short-story collection The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories, literary scholar and translator David A. Goldfarb dwells on the difficulties posed by the polysemy of the Polish word pałuba and mentions in … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, The Great Untranslated | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

The Great Untranslated: To Mythistorima tis Kyrias Ersis (The Novel of Mrs Ersi) by Nikos Gabriel Pentzikis

Posted on January 21, 2018 by

When asked about the great literary events that happened in 1922, you will immediately come up with the most renowned products of the annus mirabilis: T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland , Virgina Woolf’s Jacob’s Room and James Joyce’s Ulysses. Most likely, … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, The Great Untranslated | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Guest Post: Matthias Friedrich on En Australiareise (A Voyage to Australia) by Svein Jarvoll

Posted on January 2, 2018 by

Not long ago, I wrote a brief post about the Norwegian writer Thure Erik Lund and his mind-boggling tetralogy Myrbråtenfortellingene. As you might already know, most of English-speaking readers first learnt about Lund from his mega-popular compatriot Karl Ove Knausgård. I have recently … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Guest Posts, Reviews | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Forthcoming: The Rehearsals by Vladimir Sharov

Posted on December 25, 2017 by

In 1656, at the behest of Patriarch Nikon of Moscow, the building of a life-size replica of Jerusalem began on the bank of the river Istra. The trees were cut down and tonnes of additional earth brought in to fashion … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Forthcoming Translations | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

The Great Untranslated: Myrbråtenfortellingene by Thure Erik Lund

Posted on December 16, 2017 by

Let’s talk about Norwegian literature. No, we’re not going to talk about Karl Ove Knausgaard; we’re going to quote him: You wouldn’t have read him, there’s a Norwegian writer, Thure Erik Lund, he’s the greatest prose writer in my generation. … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, The Great Untranslated | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments

The Harmonious Forest (O Bosque Harmonioso) by Augusto Abelaira

Posted on December 13, 2017 by

licobodiscivacacotopelinamgdevogradivenliptordugalsentu rfgalipntocsersagalmutpvar No, this is not some tongue-twisting onomatopoeic coinage from Finnegans Wake. As a matter of fact, in the language of  a certain tribe inhabiting the interior of Java Island, this word is habitually used  as the coordinate conjunction … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Forthcoming: Geography of Rebels Trilogy by Maria Gabriela Llansol

Posted on November 21, 2017 by

Poetic and hermetic, unlike anything else you’re going to read for the remainder of the year, Audrey Young’s forthcoming translation of Maria Gabriela Llansol’s trilogy is a true gift to the English-speaking connoisseurs of meditative erudite prose. The three texts … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Forthcoming Translations | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment